It was long ago stated that capitalism came into the world dripping in blood and dirt, from every pore, from head to toe. While it has demonstrated that it won’t simply collapse under its own weight, the recent goings-on around the current capitalist crisis have shown that with age it has become even more hideous. Capitalism is now rank with massive state intervention required to simply keep its rotting body moving: through states propping up the financial sector and deepening the colossal attack on the working class.

The goings-on that have once again highlighted capitalism’s depravity, are the turmoil – starting in China – that has occurred over the last few weeks on stock markets; including the underlying causes that led to it, and the actions that the ruling classes have taken since then to try and end it, or at least alleviate it.

The recent volatility in world stock markets erupted in earnest in June 2015. In June, the Chinese stock markets began a plunge that has frightened the ruling classes (capitalists, top state officials and politicians) across the globe. This plunge has not yet ended, and so far the Shanghai Stock Market has lost 40% of its value. In the wake of this, stock markets from New York to London have reeled; leading to a roller coaster ride of uncertainty.

Based on a talk given in Kenya, this article argues that, while official minimum wages and other improvements are welcome gains, they are inadequate in an exploiting system based on the rule of the few. It is necessary to pose the more ambitious demand for a 'living wage,' set by the working class, and to enforce this by building powerful, autonomous, self-managed, conscientised class-struggle movements.

Rejecting 'privilege' theories, it argues that all sectors of the working class benefit from demands and campaigns that secure equal rights, equal treatment and equal wages, against divide-and-rule systems, and in which strikers build alliances with communities and users. A 'living wage' movement of this type should be located in a larger project of building a popular counter-power that can resist, and then topple, ruling class power.

This Saturday morning Cypriot people woke up to the news that they were about to be robbed. In a pre-planned ambush scheduled to coincide with a local bank holiday weekend, Eurozone apparatchiks threatened to bankrupt the Cypriot banking system by immediate withdrawal of the ECB liquidity support.

The "deal" forced on the Cypriots by Frankfurt means a "bail-out" of the banks to the tune of 17 billion euros, roughly equivalent to the annual GDP of the Republic that makes up the EU-recognised part of this divided island. But only 10 billion will be provided by the ECB and IMF, the other 7 billion will be taken by a combination of a 1.4 billion privatisation programme, but in bulk by robbing anyone with a bank account in Cyprus.